Barely one in every ten households in rural Bihar and two-thirds of houses in the state's urban areas use electricity to light their houses, Census 2011 figures reveal. Just over half of rural India uses electricity as its main source of lighting, an increase of 12% over 2001. If that seems heartening, the data also shows that 43% of rural households still use kerosene to light their houses, implying that the kerosene subsidy may not be as pointless as some would suggest. In urban India , the spread of electricity is more complete , with 93% of households using electricity as their primary source of light.

Perhaps the most depressing statistic on this count is that there are still 11 lakh households in India with no source of lighting whatsoever. That is a number slightly larger than the number of households using solar lighting.

Data on the other major use of fuels, that is cooking, shows an even less modern picture, with over 85% of rural India still using firewood, crop residue or cow dung as its primary source of fuel for cooking. Even in urban India, the proportion of those using LPG is under twothirds.

The proportion of families in urban India using kerosene for cooking has been reduced to almost a third of the 2001 figure over the last decade. But 20% of urban Indians too still use firewood for cooking. For urban and rural areas put together, the proportion of those using kerosene as the primary cooking fuel has come down from 6.5% to 2.9% over the last 10 years.

In Bihar and Orissa, the spread of LPG lags far behind the rest of the country , with less than 10% of households in both states using LPG.

Other major highlights of Houselisting & Housing Census 2011 are :

- 58% of the households have bathing facility within the premises, showing an Increase of 22 pts over 2001.

- Around half of the households have drainage connectivity with two-third have the open drainage and one-third have the closed drainage.

- 47% of the households have latrine facility within premises with 36% households have water closet and 9% households have pit latrine. There is 11 pt decline in households having no latrine from 64% to 53% in 2011.

- 61% households have Kitchen facility with 55% within premises and 6% outside premises. Two-third of the households are using firewood/crop residue, cow dung cake/coal etc. and 3% households use Kerosene. There is an increase of 11 pts in use of LPG from 18% in 2001 to 29% in 2011.

- As regards mode of communication, there is an increase of 16% in television and a corresponding decline of about 15 pt in use of radios/transistors. Less than 1 out of 10 households have Computer/laptop with only 3% having internet facility.

The penetration of internet is 8% in urban as compared to less than 1% in rural area. 63% households have Telephone/mobile facility with 82% in urban and 54% in rural area. The penetration of mobile phone is 59% and landline is 10%.

- In the modes of transport 45% of the household are having bicycle, 21% two wheelers and 5% four wheelers.

There is an increase of 9 pt in two wheeler and 2 pt in four wheelers, with bicycle showing increase of 1 pt only. 59% of the households are availing banking facilities with 68% in urban and 54% in rural areas. The rural urban difference has reduced from 19 to 13 pt.